Posted
by
timothyon Wednesday April 27, 2011 @06:36AM
from the dropped-my-pen dept.

disco_tracy writes "US Submarines CEO Bruce Jones and his team have just announced that they've developed new technology for a submersible that could take ocean explorers 36,000 feet deep, to the bottom of the Pacific's Mariana Trench."

Thanks for the information. Slashdot should adopt a policy, like Wikipedia, that all measurement units should be metric with the alternatives in parenthesis. This way, everybody would be happy. Slashdot has editors. Is it so hard for them to fix this?

I think in metric myself, but really, this is very far down the list of things I want the editors to be more diligent about.

In fact, at this point the entire editing process is far down the list of Slashdot annoyances: the freaking browser window keeps scrolling up several pages to expand the fucking parent post when I just want to middle- or right-click a link, leaving it up to me to find the post and sentence I was just reading. I swear I have never seen a more aggravating non-feature than this.

In fact, at this point the entire editing process is far down the list of Slashdot annoyances: the freaking browser window keeps scrolling up several pages to expand the fucking parent post when I just want to middle- or right-click a link, leaving it up to me to find the post and sentence I was just reading. I swear I have never seen a more aggravating non-feature than this.

(PS: I know I can just disable the new UI to stop Slashdot from messing with mouse clicks. I actually like the new UI, but I might have to do that. I keep hoping they're going to fix it RSN.)

Thanks for the information. Slashdot should adopt a policy, like Wikipedia, that all measurement units should be metric with the alternatives in parenthesis. This way, everybody would be happy. Slashdot has editors. Is it so hard for them to fix this?

I'm sorry but that is the most asinine comment I have read all day. All month even. What's the point of using the metric system when we have the Library of Congress system. If you're dealing with something that cannot be converted to the Library of Congress system, then it must not be worth mentioning.

Funny but when I watch Top Gear UK they actually say things like "miles per hour", "miles per gallon", "zero to sixty", and "quarter mile time". When I read the UK magazine Bike I see many of the same measurements but most frustrating is that they give the size of the fuel tank in liters but the fuel economy in MPG! Same thing when I read UK car magazines. When I go to car websites in the UK they also have MPG listed.So do the whiners spend as much time on the Top Gear website and sending letters to the edi

So do the whiners spend as much time on the Top Gear website and sending letters to the editors, letters to the BBC, and complaining to the car companies about them using miles, gallons and so on as they do when a US based website does?

I have no idea, I don't live in the UK. Last time I was there, they were using the metric system in a half-assed way. They half-ass many things, like their membership in the EU, for instance.

You realise that this website, although US-based, is used by people all around the world, don't you?

You do realize that it is a US based website in english don't you? Sure people come from around the world but it is a US based site and will be from a US point of view. To complain about that is as rude as someone from the US going to a French site written in French and then complaining that they didn't put measurements in feet and inches as well as metric! How closed minded and rude to come to a US website and not embrace the cultural differences!

Sure people come from around the world but it is a US based site and will be from a US point of view. To complain about that is as rude as someone from the US going to a French site written in French and then complaining that they didn't put measurements in feet and inches as well as metric!

The vast majority of the population of the world doesn't have an idea what an inch is. The metric system is the standard measurement system, in a French website or other.

How closed minded and rude to come to a US website and not embrace the cultural differences!

Many Americans complain about the absurd measurement system that only you use, in this very website. I just agree with them.

So they can look it up in Wikipedia. The vast majority of people have no idea what the Arc de Triomphe is or Trafalgar Square is or if you want to uses units of measurements a pascal, newton, or tor. A few Americans may take issue with standard measurements but most like myself can convert between them with ease. Now if you want to talk about absurd measurement systems Celsius wins in my book. WHY THE HECK DID THEY PUT 100 degrees between freezing and the boiling point of water! I am fine with them using th

It doesn't matter to me. I can do most conversions in my head I just find that giving fuel economy in imperial and tank size in metric to be the height of annoying when I want to see what the range on a bike is. When I was a kid back in the 70s there was a big push to go metric. Hey soda is sold in two liter bottles and 12 oz cans just for fun. Most items in the US have both units on them. And we still use really annoying really old measurements for wood here. The US has the same problem that the UK does. W

Being tech news, for nerds and all that stuff one would naturally expect the SI system to be in use. Then again as you say the site is US-based and the united states is famously known for it's often self-contradictory retard rollercoaster way of doing things no one should be all that suprised.

i really don't get why this has to be measured in feet. If you must use imperial system, wouldn't 8 furlongs, 5 chains and 10 yards sound nicer?
btw, my daily ride to work is 2 735 000 centimetres long.

In the United States, we eschewed the "imperial" system of measurement (look up the American Revolution), and kept just the bits that we liked (in some cases, we kept the name but changed how much it represented from the imperial measures - quantities like "gallons", "pints", and "fluid ounces;" confusion to the enemy, sir!). So we use feet and miles, not furlongs and chains. What I thought was wrong with the description was the lack of a comparison to the height of the Empire State Building or the Sears

Because furlongs, and chains are not in common usage?And because if the submitter did put it in furlongs and chains there would be a million assholes (Im gonna guess including you) bitching about slashdot using an anachronistic form of measure.

Now you can claim that the imperial measurement system itself is by and large outdated, but it is still in use here in the US, and this is a US based webpage. So if you dont mind, we would prefer keeping the words that are in common usage here in the states.

When I was a submariner, we would use feet and fathoms in different cases, e.g. the 100 fathom point, before which we would not dive, and test depth, which we referred to in feet (it would have been a non-integer number of fathoms anyway).

And you can read about it. Jules Verne had an entire book published documenting an expedition by some of his acquaintances, which always gets mislabeled as Young-Adult Fiction. At least if you can believe the Steampunk books:-)

So I'm astonished that (they claim) they'll be able to make a FULL SPHERE of glass as opposed to some puny porthole.

Some questions:A part (half?) of the sphere will have to be removed to allow people/things in and out (unlike "ecospheres") it can't be seamlessly sealed. Isn't that the most likely place of failure?

I assume there will have to be holes to allow power, cooling/heating, communications right? Another point of failure?(Actually I read a story where some grad student had figured out a way of transmitting powe/communications THROUGH a submarine's metal hull using sonic waves.)

Where in the world will they test this thing to one and a quarter times the max. pressure? (And I thought engineering standards were to one and a half max.)

When I was a kid, I wanted to make one of these to dive to the bottom of the 60 foot lake in our backyard, sorta...

So I'm astonished that (they claim) they'll be able to make a FULL SPHERE of glass as opposed to some puny porthole.

Probably Plexiglass. Plexiglass is a trademarked brand name. Everyone else calls it acrylic or PMMA. My grandfather's B-17 had a hemisphere of plexiglass for the "ball turret". Lexan (tm) aka polycarbonate would have been a heck of a lot more bullet proof, other than it was invented by the Germans, and in 1953, a bit late for the war. Anyway, two acrylic hemispheres is a traditional design

A part (half?) of the sphere will have to be removed to allow people/things in and out (unlike "ecospheres") it can't be seamlessly sealed. Isn't that the most likely place of failure?

Benthos [benthos.com] already makes glass floatation spheres (they provide buoyancy for deep-water submersibles and platforms). They're cut so the two halves fit perfectly (or as near to perfect as mechanically possible with current technology). It's precise enough that even though the cut appears flat to the eye, the two halves are keye

"A part (half?) of the sphere will have to be removed to allow people/things in and out (unlike "ecospheres") it can't be seamlessly sealed. Isn't that the most likely place of failure?"

Well, *technically* you could make the person part of a mould and then seal them in, breaking the glass when the adventurer returns (or keep them as a souvenir), but I presume they've thought of another solution.

Relatively few plastics adsorb microwave radiation, and your comm signals are probably at wifi or lower levels. Ask some ham radio guys about radar domes and antenna insulators. Plexi is actually tolerably useful for antenna insulators, long term outdoor survivability is not good but it has the virtue of not creeping much and is cheap.

Relatively few plastics adsorb microwave radiation, and your comm signals are probably at wifi or lower levels. Ask some ham radio guys about radar domes and antenna insulators. Plexi is actually tolerably useful for antenna insulators, long term outdoor survivability is not good but it has the virtue of not creeping much and is cheap.

You obviously didn't read the article.

Right. "Instead of using acrylic for the passenger compartment, they plan to use thick common glass shaped into a sphere.". An incredibly dumb idea due to brittleness, but, its their lives... Total brain freeze while posting because I had acrylic on my mind. Anyway glass insulators are traditional on ham radio antennas. Outdoor survivability is poor because they're brittle, but they are RF transparent and non RF reactive (think of how many ultra high power transmitter glass vacuum tubes have been used

Not really (for high quality glass). High voltage transmission lines have used glass cap and pin [wikipedia.org] insulators for years. They stand up to abuse quite well but are more expensive than porcelain insulators.

TFA stated that glass tends to get stronger under compression and cited that as one reason to select glass over an acrylic.

Bad title considering that (as the article states in the first paragraph) Trieste made it to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean (Challenger Deep in Mariana Trench) in 1960 with a crew of two. I'd say they have the record and since you can't go deeper...not sure it can be broken unless the ocean changes depth there.

Trieste info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste

If you're in the DC area the Washington Navy Yard museum (open to the public) has Trieste hanging in the back (right next to Alvin -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin which was used to explore the Titanic). It's worth the trip if you're local or you've been to DC enough that you're not interested in going to the Air and Space museum again.

It may be an accurate title but in a nit picking sort of way. The Trieste was not a submarine but was a bathyscaphe. I believe that it used a guide line and was not freely maneuverable. But in general I would agree with you that it was the first and so far only.

If you look you will see that there is a tube with a guide rope going through it. It was not suspended but looks as if it was guided along an cable that was anchored to the sea floor and probably a buoy on the surface.

You're wrong about Alvin though, she's still in operation. The DSV exhibited at the Navy Yard Museum is either DSV-3 Turtle [wikipedia.org] or DSV 4Sea Cliff [wikipedia.org] . They do both look like Alvin and were built using spare spheres originally ordered for Alvin though.

It would have been better had the simply built a drone craft, sent it to the bottom and THEN ANNOUNCED IT. That would have a dramatic impact. More importantly, it would enable a major push for them on new crafts.

And what would be so remarkable about a drone craft going to the ocean's floor? That wouldn't even be news. This project isn't very groundbreaking either. Humans have already been to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, 50 years ago, in the Trieste. Who cares if it wasn't technically a "submarine", it was a craft which carried humans and let them look around at the ocean floor firsthand and brought them back alive. That's close enough for me.

TFA: "Borosilicate glass, also known as soda-lime glass..." That's like saying "Bronze, also known as brass..." The two are compositionally quite different.

Pyrex (R) is Corning's trademark for the borosilicate type and it is commonly used for laboratory ware, oven windows and such. It was also used for the big 200 inch (a bit under 5 meters) mirror at Mt Palomar. [wired.com]

Soda lime glass is the more common type used for windows and beer bottles. You can quickly tell the two apart by looking edge-on into the piece, soda lime glass has a greenish cast.

The hybrid autonomous underwater vehicle "Nereus" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle) [wikipedia.org] and http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=10076 [whoi.edu] uses ceramic ball technology for buoyancy, and it's been down in the Challenger Deep, so the idea of a ceramic ball withstanding the pressure is credible. However, Nereus uses a large number of little ceramic balls, not one large (people-holding) ceramic ball, so there is some testing to be done, I think!

I can debate the fact that there may be deeper places in the ocean, in fact I think its likely.

Yes, but it was used in the article and in the title of the linked article. In fact the slashdot title, IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE TITLE IN THE LINKED ARTICLE.

You were being a pedant, and an asshole. I called you on it. I call you on it again. You do not have a leg to stand on for bitching at slashdot for the title. You are acting like a whiny known it all 12 year old. If you have an issue with the wording i

it's not a good excuse for a journalist or an editor that "someone else said so first".

When publishing a story about a "new record" it's not a stretch to *read* the source to figure out which record is meant. And if the source actually completely fails to even make a *claim* of any record. (it does not, infact, include any information whatsoever on which record is claimed) then yes, you're doing a sucky job as an editor if you just repeat "record!", not even knowing yourself what record is meant.

This is a news aggregator, no one here (as a general rule of thumb) actually writes the news. The purpose of this site is so we can gather and have a place to discuss the news. Which frankly as far as I'm concerned has one of the best commenting systems Ive ever seen.

If Slashdot had writers in their employ you would have a point. You rail against the editors here, but from what Ive seen the editors job is more of a super mod or something. They have never actually edited submissio

There is another place called the Tonga Trench that has some pretty low spots also. There is a good chance the the challenger deep isnt the deepest place in the ocean, in fact its depth has had to be adjusted numerous times. It has been measured at 35,760 ft, 36,201 ft , 35,840 ft. Its

So your telling me that all of the trenches have been mapped with the latest gear? The most accurate gear? If thats so, how come they are still finding ultra deep holes as recently as 2003.

I question the comparison of the numbers, multiple different types of equipment have been used to map underwater. Frankly I think it would be rather difficult to take the numbers found by one study, and compare them to another without adjustments for the accuracy of the different types of

The only point I'm trying to make is that we are not 100% certain thats the lowest point. It is recognized as the lowest point but there are other points that are awfully close, and vast swaths of ocean not fully mapped.